The present invention relates to an embedded type intelligent switch system to be mounted on the wall surface near the entrance of an intelligent building or the like and to be used for providing information and for controlling operation of the building facilities.
In intelligent buildings as constructed in recent years, various facilities are furnished such as lighting control, air-conditioning control, entry and exit control, fire detection system, information communication system, etc. and the on-off operation and the control operation for these facilities are performed in each office. For this purpose, various types of switches are installed in the offices such as the switch to turn on or off the lighting equipment, or the air-conditioning systems or the switches to control and adjust the illuminance or the temperature in the rooms. These switches are furnished in separate groups for each partition of the offices and are usually mounted on the wall surfaces near the entrance or at other suitable positions. Therefore, when the offices are partitioned, the positions of the switches are determined according to the partitions.
In the above switch operating system as conventionally adopted, the switches for lighting equipment and the switches for air-conditioning system are separately furnished, and each group of switches and the facilities under control of such switches are limited and fixed in the extent of one-to-one. Namely, the facilities and the extent of the control are limited for each switch, and only one function is provided for such switch.
In the office building, the room partitions and the room layout are frequently changed. When such a change occurs for the conventional switch operating system, the switch group to control the facilities in the same room has to belong partially to the other room after the change. In this case, it is necessary to move a part of the switches to the switch panel of the other rooms. For this reason, the wiring, the switch installation and the rearrangement of the room have to be done each time the room layout is changed.
One of the methods to cope with such a change in a flexible manner is to minimize the re-arrangement by adopting a wireless remote control system. However, the wireless remote control system requires a transmitter and a receiver, and it is also often necessary to divide the transmitter in order to match the room layout. With the increase of the facilities to be controlled, more transmitters or complicated transmitters are needed. This results in the increase of the installation cost of the system and the more troublesome arrangement of the transmitters.